19 ms·

Of 55 students in my class at Columbia’s Film program, 4 made a career out of it

• mgh2 5y ago
  Related podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlby1hcGkud3NqLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcy93c2ovdGhlLWpvdXJuYWw/episode/OTZiOGYwODAtNzIzZi0xMWViLWJhZjktYjc5NjZlMWVjNzM1?ep=14 https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly92aWRlby1hcGkud3N...
• BooneJS 5y ago
  I’ve seen several physics majors hired as software engineers.
  • literallyaduck 5y ago
    They have the momentum.
  • coupdejarnac 5y ago
    Physics is a pretty solid foundation for any stem related profession.
    • spicybright 5y ago
      mhm. I often find people underestimate what learning something like physics can do for career prospects. Logical system thinking applies outside the domain of physics.
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    Anecdotally, it's pretty much the most common major among top software engineers after CS and Applied Math.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Ok? Are you saying that's a good thing or a bad thing?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • aetherspawn 5y ago
    Yes, we hired a math major as a programmer and he was super useful on the team since we could throw him massive control theory equations and ask him to fix them (we design ECU firmware).
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    Haha, many of the finest software engineers were trained as physicists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc.
• gruez 5y ago
  Isn't this the typical experience for a field that's winner-take-all and have tons of people who are "passionate" about it and are willing to do anything to get in? Or is columbia especially bad here?
  • throwaway6734 5y ago
    Columbia seems to be especially bad here. My close friend got an MFA in film from a fancy art school and the majority of her cohort (who didn't come from money) are working professionally and clearing 50k+
    • MisterSandman 5y ago
      It's probably because they had lower standards (in a good way!) If they're making 50k they're probably working in the industry as staff, while most starry-eyed students who get into Columbia are aiming to become big name directors or writers.
• georgeecollins 5y ago
  The amazing thing to me now is that friends of my children are going to prestigious schools to major in video game design. This is so strange to me, as a person who has made his adult living making video games. Obviously when I started no academic would take it seriously and considering it as a career seemed like a fantasy. I am sure it is fine to study whatever interests you. And learning to think critically about anything is useful. But in the arts the real teacher is experience and everything important to know is currently unknown. I think Friedkin never went to college. He just worked at a TV station and shot news, shot dramas, learned how a camera worked, etc. You can go to a class and learn about what he did, but what he did he didn't learn about in a class.
  • elmomle 5y ago
    A lot of the most famous New Hollywood directors (Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese) did go to college, and among famous film directors they were more or less the first to have done so. In that context, Friedkin was an outlier. Since the 70s it would seem people went overboard trying to emulate the motions that led to the earlier successes they saw--as happens so often. That said, it's probably no coincidence that all this happened after massive amounts of federal money started pouring into higher education starting in the 1950s, and the academization of arts and crafts (a term I use with great respect!) seems to have proceeded in lockstep in many fields after that.
    • georgeecollins 5y ago
      I take your point but I also think actually Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese are the outliers to have studied film, but the schools they went to really make a big deal about it. But to get more into the weirdness of the video game thing.. My kids went to a pretty fancy high school($). Many of the parents think it is key that their kids get a STEM education and go and be engineers/ programmers. Many of these parents work in entertainment. For example, really good friends who are very successful TV producers have their heart set on their daughter getting an engineering degree. I mean, that is great but I want to say to them very very few STEM graduates enjoy the success you have had. Could you teach your daughter how to be a TV producer? Also, when we talk about these MFAs at regular universities, that is different than dedicated art schools like Cal Arts, RISDI.. They are a whole different kettle of fish and I think lots of people recruit there just like tech firms recruit from certain CS programs.
• stolenmerch 5y ago
  I work at a University with an top-tier, elite MFA program (not in film) that attracts star-eyed students from around the world. I've seen so many really talented folks chewed up and spit out by a pretty brutal system where there is not much besides enormous debt and creative bankruptcy on the other side of graduation. However, I've learned not to be a dick about squashing dreams. Most of them know the reality in the back of their minds but are so enamored with the idea of the MFA that they are compelled to move on it.
• tossaway9000 5y ago
  I suspect those going into video game design programs have a similar success rate (if not worse.)
• ilamont 5y ago
  Columbia has a pretty questionable record with other masters programs in creative fields. The school is exploiting the Ivy brand, the NYC location and talent, and legions of students desperate to stand out in highly competitive creative fields. For instance, a 10-month MS in Journalism is $116k (including living expenses) while a 12-month M.S. in data journalism is $160k (https://journalism.columbia.edu/cost-attendance https://journalism.columbia.edu/cost-attendance). Yes, studying under true experts in NYC is a wonderful experience for people in film, theater, journalism, writing, the arts, etc. But there should be no expectation that a very expensive degree will lead to high-paying jobs in those fields. The fact that every year Columbia is setting up all of these new grads with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and little hope of repaying it in those professions is downright predatory. The WSJ article that prompted the original Twitter thread is worth reading. A few graduates have managed to find low-paying, entry-level jobs in the film industry that pay under $50k per year, and probably did not require a master's degree. One of the grads they talked with is working at the local TJ Maxx ... the same job he had as a teenager. Via one of the WSJ reporters who worked on the report: At least 43% of the people who recently took out loans for master’s degrees at elite private universities hadn’t paid down any of their original debt or were behind on payments roughly two years after graduation. It’s not just arts degrees. Other high debt, low-earning master’s programs: NYU publishing (debt: $116k, earnings: $42k), Northwestern speech-language pathology (debt: $148k, earnings: $60k), USC marriage and family counseling (debt: $124k, earnings: $50k). All this is made possible by Grad Plus, the no-limit federal student loan program. Created in 2005, it’s now the fastest growing program. Based on partial data from the 2021 school year, grad students were on track to borrow as much as undergrads for the first time. https://twitter.com/anfuller/status/1413160574205284352 https://twitter.com/anfuller/status/1413160574205284352
  • roland35 5y ago
    Wow I had no idea a Masters could be that expensive! I paid $16k for a Masters in Computer Engineering at a local unglamorous state university (half paid for by my employer) and immediately got a promotion for $30k when I was done, so it was a pretty good rate of return!
    • 5y ago
• AceJohnny2 5y ago
  > most of the instructors were struggling to establish a career themselves One of my best friends is an architect in Europe. After years of struggling in the field, they went to be an instructor. I dunno, I feel like it's a pyramid scheme, and it makes me sad.
  • 542458 5y ago
    Architecture is a trip in that regard, at least in my experience. Gruelling hyper-competitive school*, high tuition, and terrible job prospects. * Anecdotally, I’ve never seen a group of students more willing to undermine each other than the architecture students where I took university. Because of the “accept many then weed the lowest XX%” approach it seemed like they were always trying to tear each other down. I’m sure it’s not like that everywhere, but I saw this firsthand at one school and heard secondhand for another.
    • spfzero 5y ago
      Architecture also has an additional risk factor in that it is somewhat market dependent. You might graduate when construction is hot and firms are hiring, or it might be a downturn and no one is hiring. It's a roll of the dice unfortunately.
    • optimalsolver 5y ago
      >they were always trying to tear each other down Or demolish each other, you could say.
  • smoe 5y ago
    Not sure. All the people I know that make a living off of art, musicians, sound designers, illustrators, film makers, fashion designers, etc. have one thing in common: a 10+ year grind of barely scraping by, working ridiculous hours and multiple jobs before getting in a somewhat comfortable spot. There is just not much demand for certain jobs while it is a dream of many many people. As an average software engineer you'll still easily make an above median salary somewhere. But from what I've seen, as an artist, if you are not in the top few percent, not in terms of skill but perseverance, networking and self-marketing, you'll starve.
• 542458 5y ago
  I took industrial design in school. I’m ballparking here, but I’d say the numbers are somewhere around 15% of my cohort are imployed in industrial design? But - many more are employed in adjacent fields, like UX, interior design, arts, etc. (Also this wasn’t an American education so it was dramatically more affordable - still, a decade on and I know many who are still paying back those loans.)
  • void_mint 5y ago
    Yeah I'm kinda curious what the lines are. Even in my SE degree program, probably half of the grads ended up in careers not really related to SE (Comcast support people, technical support, project management, etc). This isn't bad, and I don't necessarily think the purpose of any specific degree has to be getting a job specific to that degree. Getting a degree proves you can get a degree, and in certain industries better prepares graduates for a career path.
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      This is what I immediately wondered when I read the article. My (undergrad) mechanical engineering program start off huge, with those gigantic amphitheater lecture halls but by final year there were maybe 20 people, all of whom were acquainted by name. I can't say how many went on to practice mechanical engineering by I didn't and neither did the only other person I keep in touch with from those days. Feels like 15% entering the field would be an overestimate.
      • wheelinsupial 5y ago
        In Ontario, Canada: “According to the 2011 NHS, only about 30 per cent of employed individuals in Ontario who held a bachelor’s degree or higher in engineering were working as engineers or engineering managers. Fully two-thirds of engineering-degree holders were not working in engineering at all. Many had jobs that didn’t necessarily require a university degree.” https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis-in-engineering-labour-market.pdf https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis...
• WalterBright 5y ago
  I suppose it's like football. There are only so many athletes that can make it to professional leagues. Best to check out the career prospects before undertaking the effort to train.
  • steveBK123 5y ago
    I'd argue it's in many ways worse than that as at least professional sports is some combination of natural talent, hard work, and luck in terms of scouting. A lot of these cultural elite journalism/media/creative jobs do not pay enough even for those that make the cut, and it really turns into a combination of nepotism & having rich enough parents to fund your Manhattan lifestyle while you make barely enough money to even cover rent.
  • kyleblarson 5y ago
    Except athletes generally are getting free college whereas in this case most of the students are taking on tremendous debt.
    • 8note 5y ago
      Really they're working a job for that college, and being extraordinarily underpaid for it
  • handmodel 5y ago
    I have a technical degree but actually worked as a full-time creative for about four years (now I don't). I have found the people that did the best are the ones that treated it as a competition. People are only going to read X number of articles, watch Y number of movies, go to Z number of galleries. It is so self-centered that people think that they should be paid attention to because of their degree.
  • Andrex 5y ago
    A refrain on the Scriptnotes podcast[1] (hosted by John August and Craig Mazin) is that you're more likely to be an NFL player than a working screenwriter[2]. 1. https://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes https://johnaugust.com/scriptnotes 2. https://johnaugust.com/2015/scriptnotes-ep-215-pg13-blood-boobs-and-bullcrap-transcript https://johnaugust.com/2015/scriptnotes-ep-215-pg13-blood-bo...
• tacLog 5y ago
  How do people feel about making this a regulatory requirement for your students receiving federal aid? Track how many people graduate: - Go into a career in their field - Continue on to a different field of their own choosing - Never use their degree. This information would align the goals of students with the goals of institutions a little bit better. I know that it would be hard to track, but that kind of program feedback would have guided my choices more than graduation statistics.
  • iudqnolq 5y ago
    That's basically what collegescorecard.ed.gov is. I suspect that the reason you didn't know about it is this sort of "tell people spinach is good for them" style intervention has limited efficacy.
    • abalaji 5y ago
      I tried playing around with it and I didn't find the information that OP was posting. The closest I could find was the median salary per graduating degree / median amount of debt per degree
      • iudqnolq 5y ago
        You're completely right, that's why I said basically. I suspect median salary is a decent way of answering what's behind most of their questions. Edit: End up using their degree is also poorly defined, although the bureau of labor statistics measures something similar with underemployment.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    Another thing students can do before taking on debt is to google career prospects. None of this is secret information, nobody needs to surprised if graduates in their chosen field are unemployable.
    • spicybright 5y ago
      So many college reps don't suggest basic things like this, it's insane with how much money you're investing. It's been a while since I faced this, but I'm guessing it's even worse now with uni's becoming less financial viable.
• steveBK123 5y ago
  I saw some sensible commentary that basically.. these types of degree programs have always existed for the bored children of the rich. It just seems some didn't get the memo and took on huge debts to join them. This could be said of a lot of elite, expensive, liberal art degree programs.. The scale of these degree programs and the irresponsibility of upscale universities marketing them to those that clearly cannot afford them is evil. Just absolutely ruining peoples lives. An interesting idea I saw was the idea of making schools have skin in the game on these degree programs by requiring them to back some percent of the debt of these federal loans. I'd imagine admissions criteria, prices and career outcomes would adjust accordingly. Also a question of when personal responsibility comes into play, I mean sure we can side with the 18 year olds making bad financial decisions taking on debt for a BA degree. But by the time you are 22.. 24...26 and going for these six-figure MA/PHD tracks .. cmon. Lastly - the idea that the professors in these programs were basically failed in making themselves careers in the fields themselves is not entirely shocking. Even in many STEM universities/programs, teaching is not very career outcome focus. My personal experience was that professors cared about research first, PHD track students second, and career track BS degree students.. somewhere a few more notches down. We all coach/develop people into molds of ourselves, and professors have a hard time looking beyond turning students into more professors. Obviously this does not scale..
  • ashtonkem 5y ago
    Part of the issue is that there is no mechanism to discourage universities from doing this. With the state underwriting student debt without limit, and universities effectively gatekeeping the path towards middle class employment, there is effectively no social or financial mechanism to push back on them. Heck, there is a huge amount of social pressure pushing 18 year old kids to do this. They can’t possibly know better, but the adults encouraging such reckless behavior really should not be doing this.
    • secabeen 5y ago
      One key thing to recognize is that terminal masters programs like this are different from the bachelor's degrees and the PhD programs. They are generally smaller, and are very much run as cash cows for the departments.
• shadilay 5y ago
  The real problem with so few making it to a career is that the debt will never be repaid. This increases costs for borrowers who will pay back their loans. In the end we all pay the price for this so such schools should be privately funded instead.
• tedunangst 5y ago
  Okay, so the school promised them success, but at what point is the student responsible for their own credulity? I can't name 55 working directors or screenwriters. If the entire high level staff of every movie and show I've watched in the past year retired, I'm not sure that would create enough openings. And there's other schools. And other classes. And not every one retires.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  My friend just left as a prof there. Things might be challenging moving forward if they can’t leverage that brand value with overseas folks…
  • tomcam 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure it’s foreign students who are paying most of those bills, isn’t it?
    • aspaceman 5y ago
      They're tending towards more technical subjects, and even within the technical subjects, there's a lot of genuine criticism of poor teaching. In my engineering state school, I've heard of quite a lot of pressure from the administration because the main sentiment about the school is "poor technical value". The significantly rich are the ones who send their kids to art programs. But the upper middle class in China, Korea, Japan, India and Vietnam are increasingly sending their kids overseas for graduate education. For them, a return on the investment is incredibly important. Especially since they have the option of sending their child to Canada or the UK instead. So you see everything tending towards the technical subjects instead of the non-technical subjects with "poor returns".
• stevecalifornia 5y ago
  Govt funding of a student's degree in proportion to the need for that skillset. We need it. China does something similar to this-- essentially preventing swaths of the population from getting useless degrees.
• slg 5y ago
  >For those asking, of the other 51 students, the most common use for their MFA is teaching... in MFA programs This was thrown in at the end of the thread. I imagine this is true for a wide variety of postgraduate degrees outside the STEM, law, medicine, and business. For example, what percentage of people with a masters in art history use that degree outside of teaching art history?
  • EamonnMR 5y ago
    For something like art history though, is that really so bad? Isn't the mission of history to keep history alive generation after generation?
  • mabub24 5y ago
    A lot of humanities disciplines in grad school are quite explicit about preparing students for one thing: scholarship. The end goal is tenure-track research positions. They're not industry focused at all, though that is changing in recent years with the adjunct crisis really starting to hit quite a high note. I will say though, that I know a lot of people with MAs in Art History who work in museums, galleries, art dealers and markets, conservation and restoration projects. The experience in research and scholarship is useful for museums and other art institutions. I imagine every modern curator has a grad degree in art or art history.
• arduinomancer 5y ago
  I feel a problem is that at 18 you still have "main character bias" You spend a lot of time consuming uplifting media during childhood to where you unconsciously think of yourself as the main character of the story. When you're picking a major you just can't imagine things not working out, that's something that happens to side characters.
  • xkeysc0re 5y ago
    I mean...you are the main character of your life
    • quickthrower2 5y ago
      Sure, but the story isn't going to be like a movie, for most of us. (It's more likely to be closer to soap opera, but more plain).
      • xkeysc0re 5y ago
        I disagree. Life is the ultimate expression of direct cinema and thus the apex of what a movie "is", ontologically speaking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cin%C3%A9ma_v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cin%C3%A9ma_v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9
        • oh_sigh 5y ago
          Someone's life but not anyone's life. Not sure why the films listed on that page are about JFK and Bob Dylan if you can make a move about anyone.
          • xkeysc0re 5y ago
            My personal favorite film about an "anyone" https://vimeo.com/64421202 https://vimeo.com/64421202 There's a lot of incredible cinema created from home movie footage as well as just letting the camera roll in your town https://www.topic.com/the-bard-of-braddock https://www.topic.com/the-bard-of-braddock
• Invictus0 5y ago
  Is a masters degree actually useful in any profession? Many of the CS/data science/machine learning masters programs I've seen are basically 2-year data structures and algorithms programs with a few flashy-named electives thrown in, for people who already have a semi-technical bachelors. I work in engineering for a multibillion dollar industrial/IT company and we don't have any policy to give employees a raise if they get a masters. It's always seemed like a scam to me.
  • mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
    Two situations were it might make sense: 1) Person with non-programming stem degree who really learns a lot from what you describe. Basically a fancy 2nd bachelors. 2) Connections with jobs/employers. A good programmer from a 'no-name school' may struggle to find a good first job. Two years at Stanford's CS program and suddenly they'll have tons of offers. Not saying the 2nd case is 'fair' or 'good' - but it's super useful to the individual who goes in knowing what they're doing.
  • auto 5y ago
    I’ve been a professional dev for a decade, full-stack, backend and database all the way down to firmware, which is where I sit now. I finished a two year online MS in Comp Sci. last year, and I often tell people it’s really a Master’s in Self-Discipline with a focus on CS. I definitely had primarily challenging classes, more so for the content amount and work expectations than understanding the material, but that’s to be expected with a program targeted at professionals. I went into getting it because I knew I had some holes in my knowledge, and I felt like I needed something to really stir up my career. I funded it entirely myself, to the tune of ~50k, but halfway through completion also switched companies for a ~30k raise. I can’t necessarily make an objective argument that it has paid for itself, as I might have been able to get the new job without it, but I without a doubt have a different level of self-confidence and time management discipline that I would not have without going through the program, especially considering my first-born came a month after that job switch, with 4 classes to go!
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• spoonjim 5y ago
  I feel like this is obvious but maybe not to a 22 year old. It’s like saying that 4 graduates of the MFA program are working novelists, or 4 graduates from Alabama this year are going into the NFL. The careers where your work is distributed to millions of people have a huge gap between public awareness of the profession and the number of jobs available in it, because each producer serves millions of consumers. These days, you should only go to film school if you have an active YouTube following... if you don’t already have the drive and the skill to create video and market it, you don’t even have a chance of surviving.
  • georgeecollins 5y ago
    The people with an active YouTube following are exactly who doesn't need to go to Film School. They can entertain people with their craft. People in film / TV are as likely to hire a successful YouTuber as any MFA.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > People in film / TV are as likely to hire a successful YouTuber as any MFA. Well, not any MFA, as there are people with MFA’s and established track records. There's a degree of success where the degree probably makes no marginal benefit, but, especially unless you want to do almost exactly the same thing as you are already doing with the YouTube channel in a very similar medium, its probably not just “has an active YouTube following”.
• joe_the_user 5y ago
  My sister is a tenure-track professor of media studies at one point. She told me at one point that there are as many film schools in the US as working videographers in Hollywood. Of course, most people the Hollywood product jobs (film, sound, lighting) literally inherit those positions. So four people? Pretty good. I've heard there's a big market for wedding videographers, however. But that's not what most people thinking.
  • dfadsadsf 5y ago
    There are a lot of corporate jobs in media/video too - those 10 seconds Facebook ads or cringe corporate trainings do shoot themselves.
• morelandjs 5y ago
  As a side remark, physics phd programs are a pretty awesome. The better programs pay a living wage if you aren't supporting a family. You can often travel the world for free by attending conferences in exotic locations. The subject matter is fascinating, and the people tend to be interesting. You learn skills that are highly sought after. The degree is well respected and transferable to multiple industries. Your peers are collegial and want to see you succeed. Physicists tend to enjoy knowledge sharing. You can generally exit at any time and immediately transition into lucrative careers in, for example, tech and finance. It has it's downsides, but for how whimsical it is, it's a pretty soft landing if you decide you want out.
  • Cyph0n 5y ago
    Disclaimer: I decided to drop out of a electrical engineering PhD program, so take the below with a grain of salt :) This is not limited to just physics, but all STEM PhDs. Actually, you should never join a PhD program if it’s not funded! As for the pay.. you’ll need to define “living”. Yes, you will likely travel, but research funding is more often than not very tight and restricted. As a result, travel conditions are not always ideal. As far as the subject matter goes, it’s as interesting as you make it out to be. The more crucial point is that you must enjoy what you’re doing to be able to pull through the 5 year+ program. Your peers can be collegial and friendly, yes, but make no mistake: competition can get fierce in academia too. Exiting is always an option, but once you’re a few years in, it can be hard to jump ship due to the sunk cost fallacy.
    • ModernMech 5y ago
      > Yes, you will likely travel, but research funding is more often than not very tight and restricted. As a result, travel conditions are not always ideal. Tell me about it. I once had to travel to Japan for a conference. Problem was, I couldn't fly any carrier that wasn't American due to the conditions of the grant. What would have been a very long trip from the East Coast of the USA turned into multiple days and 4 flights (Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA, Seoul, Tokyo) just to satisfy the requirements. I was so exhausted by the time I got to the venue, I passed out for 14 hours and practically missed the first day of the conference.
• arbitragy 5y ago
  These programs are absolute cash cows for universities. One of the primary reasons that tuition has considerably outpaced inflation is government guaranteed loans. Two of the primary 'cost-disease' areas - healthcare and education - are some of the most regulated areas of our lives. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-6/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-6...
  • misiti3780 5y ago
    Imagine what might happen if the US government made all college education free. I am all for the government potentially paying for degrees, but I do see how it would be helpful for taxpayer dollars to pay for hundreds of kids to get a Columbia MFA.
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      If the government is going to be paying for college, it's also going to limit the cost of degrees very harshly, making these kinds of programs barely profitable if at all. If there still is profit after such a reform. Universities don't make a profit where I live.
• tomcam 5y ago
  Honest question with no agenda for recent non-tech grads here: did you assume that merely getting a degree in something assured you would get a job? Even when I was a college student 40 years ago I never thought there was a causative connection.
  • qmmmur 5y ago
    I went into music because I liked it. Pursued it all the way to the PhD level and got more into the tech side as I developed my career and skills. Shortly moving into a job once I get my doctorate conferred where I'll be working with machine listening stuff in a research capacity. I knew the risks and at every stage my supervisors gave me the realities of what I was doing. I was tactical while pursuing my "passion" although that term is pretty dead to me now. You simply make sure your I come is as much aligned with the not bulkshit parts of life. Ultimately everyone wants freedom till other people create a debt bubble ... Oh wait
  • 8note 5y ago
    I don't think havin a tech degree guarantees me a job. If you think it does, you'll be in for a rude awakening some day
• forrestthewoods 5y ago
  Abolish federal loans for degrees. The insane cost of college will solve itself literally over night. Letting 18-22 year old children take on six figures of debt that can not be discharged via bankruptcy is insane and downright immoral. If the government wants to give away Pell grants then please do so by all means. But federally backed loans are causing irreparable harm.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    That's right. Note three industries that suffer from constant attempts by the government to reduce costs - education, health care, and housing. The reverse is the result of these idealistic but misguided programs. Note another industry with zero regulation - software - where costs have declined to zero. Capitalist swine that I am, I also give away the software I write for free.
    • 8note 5y ago
      The goal of the government reducing these costs is to make sure poor people can use them. A free market solution chooses to not serve poor people, so it can be cheaper for richer people. Its not the same thing. (Notably, government taxes in software are still 30% revenue, eg. The AppStore)
      • forrestthewoods 5y ago
        > The goal of the government reducing these costs is to make sure poor people can use them. The tragic irony is that the government’s involvement has had the opposite effect. College is more unaffordable than it has ever been. A pure free market solution is not perfectly optimal. But it’d be a hell of a lot better than the unmitigated disaster that exists today.
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        > A free market solution chooses to not serve poor people McDonald's serves poor people. Apple sells tons of iphones to poor people. For the coup de grâce, the free market provides free software to poor people!
• JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  College didn't used to be the same as technical school or apprentice programs. They were there to let folks become educated. To decide that a career is the only use of a degree, is a fairly modern conceit.
  • nemo44x 5y ago
    They were there to let the wealthy and the above average middle class get educated. They were not for most people. They were an advantage for upward mobility. Now they are table stakes.
• hitekker 5y ago
  > …I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia’s prestigious graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to jump-start his own stalled out career. Perhaps the most eye-popping part of this twitter thread.
• facet1ous 5y ago
  Of all fields, do these students _honestly_ expect that going to a 6 figure film program to will turn them into a successful filmmaker? Look around. All the people who have made it in Hollywood did so through via nepotism/cronyism or by busting their ass making their own movies and getting lucky. You probably have more chance of success investing all your time and money into real projects and trying to market/distribute them than spending years in school and drowning in debt. Easier said than done, but there's no way into that industry that isn't tough and an MFA degree isn't going to impress anyone.
  • DubiousPusher 5y ago
    I think it's more likely that they aren't really comprehending the numbers. They look at the generations of film students before them who went to film school at a much cheaper price. In that case, those that didn't make a career out of it weren't trapped by the decision to go in the first place.
  • steveBK123 5y ago
    Precisely. I really don't understand the arts education industrial complex. How many high level artists were taught their art in a prestigious university setting? And those that did.. how many actually finished their degree versus those that dropped out early because they were already on their way to success and didn't need the stamp of approval?
    • jedberg 5y ago
      https://cinema.usc.edu/alumni/notable.cfm https://cinema.usc.edu/alumni/notable.cfm
      • Redoubts 5y ago
        Picking someone at random off the list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Beimler_(screenwriter)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Beimler_(screenwriter)?wp... > He attended the University of Southern California, graduating in 1977 with a degree in film production. > It was eight years before Beimler sold his first script, during which time he earned a living as a documentary cameraman – the same type of work that his father was involved in lol.
• burgessaccount 5y ago
  Instead of subsidizing the ridiculously inflated cost of these programs through loans, the government should just open a string of bare-bones universities across the country that offer decent job training for free. No fancy dorms, no deluxe athletics, just a free education. Don’t subsidize an over-expensive private market. Force the private market to compete with dirt cheap. (Same goes for health care, too)
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    We already have that - public high schools. Unfortunately, being "free" equates to being nigh worthless. (I put "free" in quotes because high school diplomas cost the taxpayers plenty.)
    • burgessaccount 5y ago
      I find that statement pretty goofy. I went to an excellent public school - better than many private schools. The overall expansion of public schools since the 19th century has massively benefitted the American economy. Look at the relative lifetime earnings of high school graduates vs high school dropouts. It’s taxpayer money we’ll spent.
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        Caltech freshman physics dispensed with 2 years of my high school physics in about 2 lectures. After that the piano fell on me, and I was in deep doo doo, with 2 years of physics required for graduation. My "honors" high school chemistry class fared even worse. While I had a fine time in high school, hanging with my friends and mucking about with muscle cars, helpful in college it was not.
        • burgessaccount 5y ago
          Okay, well I had the opposite experience, and found that my public high school had made me over-prepared for Yale, to the point that writing 20 page papers was easy. One individual, anecdotal experience proves nothing. That is why I pointed to the overall statistics on high school graduates. Perhaps some public high schools do not make some people fully ready for Caltech (I wouldn’t expect them to??) but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a net economic good. Public schools set a good floor that the best private schools can expensively surpass; public colleges should set a good floor that the best private colleges expensively surpass; public health care should set a good floor that private health care can expensively surpass, etc. that is a more effective system for balancing quality and cost than the current unchecked subsidies for private systems
• nemo44x 5y ago
  The worst thing working class people can do is to take on the values and lifestyles of the upper and upper middle class.
• arduinomancer 5y ago
  The problem with digital creative industries is that they are essentially a zero sum game + zero marginal unit cost. Example with music industry: Zero sum: I as the average music listener will only be a fan of N artists. I can only listen to so many minutes of music per day. If I discover better artists it doesn't increase my total listening time. I instead have to kick another artist out of the rotation to bring in a new one. (same thing applies to people who only listen to playlists) No marginal unit cost: adding more music listeners to the industry does not require more musicians to service them, Drake can supply the entire world with the same song for no unit cost
  • spbaar 5y ago
    and even if I decide to be a fan of an indie artist, unless I seek them out, the algorithm is constantly pushing me towards more popular things. I'm not going to open up Bandcamp instead of Spotify
• ggm 5y ago
  Industry training is probably a better entry to Arts and Entertainment. Since the director class jobs are going to be who-you-know and grace and favour anyway, pretending the degree got you there is silly: Convert this to classic apprenticeship with placements, stop selling dreams.
  • mabub24 5y ago
    The apprenticeship model is how Hollywood still operates, basically (add in outrageous amounts of luck). Columbia, and a lot of other film schools, are just exorbitantly expensive trade schools but modelled on MFA writing programs, and networking programs. Everyone that I know who is involved in the industry, and actually making a living, just started working in industry instead of pursuing grad school.
    • ggm 5y ago
      So the problem is grad school? Fine.. lets shut down the grad programme and stick to undergrad basic training, with an industry placement, Get people hands-on experience and a union ticket.
• deeviant 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the rich people going into these programs don't think that all 55 of them are going achieve the big film career, but rather that they themselves will be one of the 4 of 55 that make it.
• beezischillin 5y ago
  I’m fairly worried about a future student loan crisis and collapse because this is not sustainable and certainly not something that functions as intended.
• bluetwo 5y ago
  My brother graduated with a similar degree from a less prestigious school (Temple University) and has been working in the industry for over 20 years.
• yuy910616 5y ago
  As much as I hate leetcode type interview questions, I can't help but wonder what if film industry had a reliable* way to gather signal, and thus don't have to rely on institutions like Columbia to provide that stamp of approval.
  • mannerheim 5y ago
    Do they rely on institutions like Columbia? Almost none of the graduates work in the film industry, and the tweeter didn't even graduate. His department chair even shook him down to try and get his own TV pilot on the air! If being the film department chair at Columbia isn't a reliable enough signal to get your foot in the door, surely the degree can't be worth anything either.
    • yuy910616 5y ago
      I get your point - it's not a good signal! But I think it's important to add that from a student's perspective, it's reliable because it is COLUMBIA.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  Googled "film and media studies starting salary" and this is the TOP result: "The average film, video and photographic arts major who graduates from a school in the United States earns about $22,656 per year during the early years of their career." It's not a secret.
  • victor9000 5y ago
    That's pretty bleak given the amount of debt that you have to take on these days.
• zwaps 5y ago
  I think the problem is that in the American education system, anything needs to be taught at a university. There are trade schools, but there are no "real" trade school degrees that actually mean something. The idea of academic research is valuable in pretty much any field. Do we want academics studying film as an art form? If you mediate about this question, I think you'll come to the conclusion that we (as society) do want that. Similarly, I have no doubt that these professors care first about their research, second maybe about teaching, and consider anything else as sideshow. Because that's how it is in any academic discipline (with whatever rigor you want to attribute to the scientific aspect of it). However, in the US, people go to university to learn a skill. I'd ask: Why? I have a friend who became an extremely skilled TV producer, and he has never seen a university from the inside. He did a dual-path education, working for a public broadcaster and visiting a trade school for film at the same time. This dude is superb at what he does. I see this pattern in many areas. University and practical skills are often distant. In some sense, they should be. Yes, the Humboldian ideal states that researchers should also teach. But they teach research. Today, to become an excellent researcher, you essentially have to forgo practical experience - there is so much pressure to be excellent in other areas. The weirdest arena to see all this are business schools. These schools exist to educate practitioners. They make their money making MBAs, who generally have zero interest in academia. However, talk to any academic professor (which is the high status position compared to "professors of practice") at a business school. What do they really care about? Their research, their academic peers, their PhDs. Everything else is a nuisance that pays the bills.
  • wheelinsupial 5y ago
    You mention the “Humboldian ideal,” do you have any insight into why that particular part of the German education system seems to have been picked up in North America, but the rest of the system (universities of applied science, technical universities, apprenticeships) wasn’t?
• jhunter1016 5y ago
  I recommend to anyone who will listen that they do not get a graduate degree in the arts unless they are financially comfortable to do so. I love writing, but I didn’t get my MFA until I was making enough money to get that degree with the full knowledge that it probably wouldn’t pay for itself.
• _RPL5_ 5y ago
  The entire thread is pure gold. If you scroll down, he writes: > The Chair [of the Columbia Film program] reached out and said he was confident that we could work out an arrangement to get my degree. But he insisted that I fly out to NYC immediately for an in-person meeting. So I spent a fortune on a last-minute flight in order to hear his proposal. > But instead of telling me what I need to do to satisfy the requirements to get my degree, the Chair began pitching me his idea for a TV pilot. In excruciating scene-by-scene detail. I nodded along, waiting to get back to the terms of me getting my degree. > But to my horror... I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia’s prestigious graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to jump-start his own stalled out career.
  • steveBK123 5y ago
    this was probably my favorite part its grift all the way down!
  • hogFeast 5y ago
    I studied a social science (economic history) with the suspicion (I am can't recall why) that a lot of people in universities who do more vocational subjects are there because they can't actually make money using those skills (so I would only do a course that was totally useless). When I got to university that was confirmed in spades (and I was glad to actually get something for my money, because the subject was "useless", I got great teaching, great feedback on my work, etc.). Obviously, business was the absolute worst (one professor taught a course on investing, he literally wrote a book on investing, he left at the same time I graduated to run a fund...just before the pandemic, he got fired because his fund was down 10-20%/year, he was one of the worst-performing fund managers in the UK at the time), stuff like law was pretty decent (although most people who studied law never became lawyers either, I don't understand how because the school was number #1 ranked for law...after I left, I saw quite a few lawyers who got a job due to family...so it might be that), and even CS had a great reputation in teaching but the actual linkages with industry were non-existent, so the teachers taught the theory and things they thought were fun to teach (lots of students struggled, I spoke to startups who said they had trouble recruiting, even though this school turned out hundreds of grads every year, because they all just went to larger companies that didn't require actual development skills). It isn't the case everywhere but I think the idea that university is required for success outside university is misleading, particularly for high school students. A lot of the knowledge is definitely very useful but life outside university tends to be about things that aren't in any books. University is orthogonal to life.
• desine 5y ago
  An acquaintance of mine recently started a MFA program at NY Film School. He's going to end up spending about six figures finishing the program, if he sees it through. I want to tell him it's a waste of money, but that's not my place - partly because he's an acquaintance and not a friend, and partly because it's just not polite. But it's such a waste - and what's worse is he should know it. We worked together in post production for years. He's lived in Los Angeles even longer. If you want to be a filmmaker, the most assured path is to make films. Be a production assistant for 2 years. Yes it will suck - you'll be getting the director's car washed and fetching his coffee for under $200 day rate. But you'll make the necessary social connections, have experience on set (a near absolute necessity for any better jobs in the field), and know the actual ins-and-outs of film production, which is a fairly specialized niche. The other option is to make some indie films on your own dime, and jump from there. The really successful people do both. James Cameron got his big start doing shit-work on small films, and got noticed when he made maggots writhe on a horror film shoot by putting a 12v battery across them. Harrison Ford got his big break being a charming carpenter on set. But this acquaintance is paying tens of thousands of dollars per year for someone else to tell him to make indie films, and for the criticism and critique from other people making the same stupid decision. Youtube will tell you why your indie film sucks for free, and you'll have a bigger audience to draw from. On one hand it's frustrating, but on the other, I don't really like the guy, so mostly I'm alright just minding my own business. It does kinda suck that there's a whole industry around ripping these people off though. Good movies are cool. Making them is cool. You don't need a high end education to do it. There's a lot of parallels to programming cool (not CS-heavy) things like games or innovative apps. Or making pop music. You just have to do it.
• omosubi 5y ago
  This would all be fixed if the government would stop backing student loans.
• deleted 5y ago
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• mfadropout 5y ago
  I was one of these film MFA students, seduced by my own delusional idea that I could continue to develop my own work for several years (I was already a flailing filmmaker) and then re-launch my career. And then, if necessary, teach in a college film program with my MFA - and continue to develop my own work. It was all going to work out! I’ve made many mistakes, but high-tailing from that program after 9 months and finding something else to do in life was not one of them. Hindsight being 2020, I missed a fabulous opportunity to shoot a documentary about my MFA classmates, who were a very fine cross-section of the kind of students from around the world who would find and spend about a hundred thousand dollars in the year 2000 for the privilege of having a teaching assistant show you how to operate a video camera while simultaneously trying to read and understand the instruction manual. Probably for the first time. The most successful of my classmates who stuck with it makes commercials in the Midwest. The nicest one never made a film at all yet somehow is a tenured professor at a small college in California. I stumbled my way into technology and am making up for years that were fun but deeply unprofitable. I must say that the faculty at my program were the Woody Allen punch-line incarnate: because the stakes are so low.
  • seanicus 5y ago
    Many folks say to just take that money you'd spend on tuition and make a short film. What's your opinion on that? I got an AS in film production, and that was cheaper than making a mid-budget short film, and also helped make contacts. I was in city w/o much film program so even PA gigs were hard to come by and paying for my contacts was a great shortcut. There's a very short chain of links between the guy who sat next to me in Stagecraft 101 and my present job 20 years later. And get this: turns out I hated film production itself and the long hours as well as unreliable life of a freelancer. This meant taking a day job and missing out on a lot of freelance gigs due to weekday availability, but even with that handicap I managed to be gainfully employed (although the first 5 years out of college were pretty rough).
  • sjg007 5y ago
    That's the playbook there, make the documentary about the program. Would be great! I could see an Exit Through the Gift Shop type of vibe. It has all the elements.
• deleted 5y ago
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• nkmnz 5y ago
  This is how winner-takes-all markets work. Though I really think that the remaining 51 students could build their career upon skills, knowledge and network gained during the program. In the end, there are a lot of jobs where you tell stories which pay much better than the entertainment industry - at least on average.
• apexalpha 5y ago
  One of the things I realized way too late in the whole 'student debt' debate is that people in the US actually have to pay a market rate interest rate on it. Making it so that a lot of people can barely even pay the interest, let alone the principal. $200k for a film degree, where you have a (arguably) one in 55 shot of even getting into the career should come with some warning signs to say the least.
• jasonkester 5y ago
  I actually had to read the thread to see whether the author thought this was a good thing or bad. My first it seemed like a pretty high success rate for a single class. I guess it’s because “famous director” sounds like one of those majors that your idiot friends go into that couldn’t possibly ever end up getting them a job in the real world. Just like Archeology and Marine Biology, you know there’s such a limited supply of Indiana Jones and Jacques Cousteau jobs out there that you have to wonder why anybody would actually pay tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives to set them up for that much disappointment. I mean, sure, NASA does in fact hire Astronauts every year. But it’s probably worth hedging your bet just a bit unless you have a big safety net.
• thunderbong 5y ago
  More readable - https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1413326562821246978.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1413326562821246978.html
• juanuys 5y ago
  Just this weekend, I read this passage (p.219) in Making Of Prince Of Persia, by Jordan Mechner [1], where his colleague tries to dissuade him from tuition, and rather learning on the job: Deborah had this to say about NYU: "They say it's a three-year program, but it really takes five years. You can expect to spend $2000 on your first-year film, $10,000 second year, and $20,000 third year. Add that to three years' tuition, and you've spent a hundred thousand dollars. What I would do, if you have the wherewithal - I mean, three years and $100,000 - is spend those three years working for free on every film shoot you can. At the end of it, you'll know how a film gets made; everybody will owe you favors, so you'll have a crew; the equipment rental places and the labs will know you, so they might give you a deal too. Take the $100,000 and make a feature! Then you'll be a filmmaker." She sighed and said: "But no one ever does that. They come around like you're doing, and ask a lot of questions, and I tell them what I just told you, and then they go off and enroll in the program." 1. https://jordanmechner.com/store/the-making-of-prince-of-persia/ https://jordanmechner.com/store/the-making-of-prince-of-pers...
• KoftaBob 5y ago
  For those interested, I wrote a blogpost that touches on this general topic a while back, after learning some surprising things about the causes of high tuition costs: "Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? Probably because the government handed them a blank check in 1993." https://blog.usejournal.com/why-has-college-gotten-so-expensive-in-the-last-30-years-3505af9aded8 https://blog.usejournal.com/why-has-college-gotten-so-expens...
• publicola1990 5y ago
  "Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let's say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema." --Werner Herzog
• rednerrus 5y ago
  If this is what you're interested in. Figure out what it is that you want to do specifically. Move to LA or Vancouver and get a job as a PA. Take whatever you can get. Show up early. Go home late. Bust your ass. Get in with the trade that you're interested in. Make nice with those people.
  • jiscariot 5y ago
    Or go the Jim Jarmusch route--take the scholarship/loans and use them to create a film, later getting an honorary degree from the university: "The degree along with $1.75 can buy you a cup of coffee.”
    • rednerrus 5y ago
      It's even easier today. You can get a camera that you could shoot a feature film with for $200 used. You can buy a lighting rig on Amazon for $100. The amount of processing power and tools available in your phone are unbelievable compared to 15 years ago. Plus distribution is ubiquitous. There are an endless number of youtube channels that run circles around classes I took in film school.
• rfwhyte 5y ago
  The problem with film school's like Columbia, is they're deluding their students with this ludicrously unreasonable expectation that they're going to graduate and immediately get jobs at the very top of the film industry hierarchy. It's like if every business school just taught their students how to be CEOs, and completely ignored the practical, hands on skills required to actually work your way up to such a position over a decades long career in the real world. Sure everyone wants to be a writer or director, but those so called "Above the line" positions make up a tiny fraction of the cast and crew that go into making a film, and sit at the tipy-top of the pecking order. The vast majority of people who work on a given film are in props, costumes, construction, set dec, production, finance, marketing, ec., yet film schools broadly speaking ignore all these lucrative, fulfilling film industry careers in favor of pumping out legions of wanna-be writers and directors competing for an incredibly small number of jobs. Sadly, like so many other post-secondary institutions, film schools are really selling a dream rather than selling a path to a career.